Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the disclosure relate generally to wireless communication, and more specifically, but not exclusively, to aggregating data from a plurality of devices and delivering the aggregated data to another device.
Description of Related Art
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication or machine type communication (MTC) refers to data communication technologies that allow automated devices to communicate with one another without human intervention. For example, M2M and/or MTC may refer to communication from devices that integrate sensors or meters to measure or capture information and relay that information to a central server or application program that can make use of the information or present the information to humans interacting with the program or application. These devices may be called M2M devices, MTC devices and/or MTC user equipments (UEs). For convenience, these devices may simply be referred to as MTC devices in the discussion that follows.
MTC devices may be used to collect information or enable automated behavior of machines. Examples of applications for MTC devices include smart metering, inventory monitoring, water level monitoring, equipment monitoring, healthcare monitoring, wildlife monitoring, weather and geological event monitoring, fleet management and tracking, remote security sensing, physical access control, and transaction-based business charging. The market for MTC devices is expected to grow rapidly as industries such as automotive, security, healthcare, and fleet management employ MTC to increase productivity, manage costs, and/or expand customer services.
MTC devices may use a variety of wired and/or wireless communication technologies. For example, MTC devices may communicate with a network over various wide area network (WAN) technologies, such as 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), and/or over various local area network (LAN) technologies (e.g., IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX), etc.). MTC devices may also communicate with one another using various peer-to-peer technologies such as LTE-Direct (LTE-D), Bluetooth, ZigBee, and/or other ad-hoc or mesh network technologies. The expansion of multiple access wireless networks around the world has made it far easier for MTC communication to take place and has lessened the amount of power and time for information to be communicated between machines.
Typically, MTC devices are power efficient and low-cost. Therefore, these devices might be equipped with a radiofrequency (RF) amplifier that has relatively limited radiofrequency (RF) transmit power. Also, MTC devices may employ a transceiver that communicates via a relatively narrow frequency band (e.g., relative to the frequency band used for a WAN). As a result, MTC devices may have link budget challenges, particularly for up-link communication to a base station (e.g., an enhanced Node B (eNB)).